Alex Martinis Roe shows a sculpture in Archive Kabinett front window and her film A story from Circolo della Rosa,both of which continue her work on feminist genealogies.The film is narrated by the artist’s voice and is addressed to a close colleague in the form of a letter, telling a story about two women. The film weaves together fragments from her recent oral history research with members of Libreria delle donne and her experiences of their collective activities, as well as her exploration of related spaces, archives and texts.

On the occasion of the show Alex Martinis Roe selected a series of books from both her personal library and the Milan Women’s Bookstore. The collection takes the form of anopen access reference library at Archive Kabinett inviting users for individual or collective reading, serving as site for sharing resources and ways of thinking. Excerpts from this collection are also made available on AAAAARG.ORG.

The show was organized by Fiona Geuss and it was made possible with support by Graduiertenschule, Universität der Künste Berlin. Download pamphlet of the event.

An introductory conversation about listening to rubble, followed by a visual introduction into the main pathways through the book. The talk was accompanied by a display of visual material, sketches, notes and photographs from the process of how trail took shape.

As part of dOCUMENTA (13) Natascha Sadr Haghighian laid out a trail at the Auehang in Kassel. It was located next to a memorial to the fallen German soldiers of the two World Wars and accompanied by onomatopoeic sounds. In the process of laying out the trail, Haghighian discovered that the entire slope consisted of rubble from the Second World War. In the book she follows the ‘trail’ of this debris together with Pola Sieverding and Jasper Kettner and ends up with the Kassel-based armaments industry, with stories of migration and forced labour, with military vehicles named after animals, and with flowers that only grow in rubble.

Visionary Archive Festival at Arsenal Cinema,

Archive Kabinett and Scriptings

May 21–31

‘Visionary Archive’ is a combination of locally motivated research projects based on individual initiatives that examine highly disparate, largely unexplored collections of films in Berlin, Bissau, Johannesburg, Cairo and Khartoum. The bulk of the material stems from the second half of the 20th century and carries the marks of contemporary history as well as personal, often specific political motivations involved in its creation and its eventual physical safeguarding. The research carried out by the artists, archivists, curators and academics involved in the project has engaged with the biography of the material, the gaps and contradictions that exist within this historically, aesthetically, and politically charged cinematic legacy. The festival was a continuation of the work carried out by sharing and discussing with audiences. As part of the festival at Arsenal Cinema exhibitions take place at Archive Kabinett and Scriptings.

‘The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential.’ — Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 1991.

Inessential Fathers was invitation to read together as a means to trace feminisms’ genealogies through its manifestos. The exhibition at Archive, took as point of departure these documents of feminist history, that have simultaneously worked to invite collective action and to expose the limitations of the language that they speak through. The exhibition featured works by artists that negotiate strategies for the production of feminist situations and yet simultaneously reveal the conditions that limit them or, in turn, make them possible.

In The Choreography of Labour, a project developed at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Romana Schmalisch has examined different historical and contemporary strategies of efficiency and education that are centred around the body: on the one hand, the project critically examined choreographer Rudolf Laban’s techniques to improve workers’ body efficiency for production, and on the other, it investigated the different programmes that job centres in Paris use to make unemployed young people or those with limited working capability fit for the demands of the labour market. The main interest of The Choreography of Labour was to show an abstract labour force behind all these programs.

For her presentation at Kabinett, Romana Schmalisch revisited the Mobile Cinema, a project exploring the idea of a travelling popular cinema, which serves as a mediating device to talk about the relationship between labour and art. The Mobile Cinema is a reconstruction of a film prop from Alexander Medvedkin’s film “The New Moscow” (1938), a model of a small cinema the protagonist takes on his travels across the Soviet Union to discuss his vision of society.

Photo of the week:For Excellence in Poetry. Readings at Archive Kabinett

Martin Beck. Summer Winter East West

Friday, June 5 at 6 pm

NO PHOTOGRAPHS – VISITING HOURS 8 AM TO 8 PM ONLY

A presentation by Martin Beck

Followed by a conversation with the co-editor

of the book Christina von Rotenhan

Display and its social dimensions are leitmotifs in the multiform art practice of Martin Beck. His exhibition ‘Last Night’ at Kunsthaus Glarus reflected on the relations between exhibiting and community by bringing together two bodies of works: one drawing on modern exhibition history, the other building on the history of countercultural communes in the 1960s and early ’70s United States. Summer Winter East West discusses Beck’s engagament with display not only as a tool of presentation but also as a form of communication – within and beyond the realm of the exhibition.

L A T E S T E V E N T S

C U R R E N T

U P C O M I N G

Archive is a platform for cultural research and debate. It bringstogether activists and cultural practitioners in an adaptable andnon-hierarchal structure with the aim to foster a unique space for discussion and exchange. Archive is engaged in a wide range of activities including publishing and exhibition making. ArchiveBooks produces readers, monographs and artists’ books as well as journals focusing on contemporary cultural production.Located in Berlin, Archive Kabinett is both a library and abookshop showcasing a selected range of printed matters, andsimultaneously a space for lectures, screenings and exhibitions.Archive Journal is a biannual cross-disciplinary journal. As its name suggests, it is primarily concerned with the notion of documentation but also with contemporary uses of translation and recirculation. Archive Appendix is the design department that brings a conceptual approach to the relation between text and image.

Launch of the book Maya Schweizer. Lieux de Mémoire and Desire. Conversation with the artist.

S U M M E R B R E A K

We will be closed

from August 13th to

August 17th, 2015

B O O K S H O P

July 20 – August 6, 2015

On the occasion of the Berlin launch of the publication

Deimantas Narkevičius. Da Capo: Fifteen Films

a selection of the films featured in the book will be on view at Archive Kabinett.

Da Capo constitutes the first comprehensive overview of the filmic production of Deimantas Narkevičius. The book features essays written by 16 authors on 15 films made by Narkevičius from 1997 through to today and the integral version of the films’ dialogue list which account for an articulation specific to Narkevičius’ film montage.

Alex Cuff lives in Brooklyn where she teaches at a public high school and edits No, Dear magazine.

Mirene Arsanios is a writer based in Beirut. She edits the bi-lingual magazine, Makhzin, and is the co-founder of 98weeks project space.

Sam Wilder translates and lives in Berlin.

Setareh Shahbazi was once the neighbor of Mirene Arsanios and

Sam Wilder in Beirut. She is an artist currently based in Berlin.

U P C O M I N G

JVE A

Book Launch

Archive Kabinett

Tuesday, July 28 at 6.30 pm

The JVE A is an association with four letters. Founded in 2013 by former researchers of the Jan van Eyck Academie it supports a space for exchange of ongoing research, for testing works in progress and experimenting with new ideas in the fields of art, design and theory. From 28 July–1 August 2015 the JVE A organizes its third meeting “Jaw Versus Eye Attack”: a series of talks, performances and screenings in collaboration with Archive Kabinett, Vierte Welt, Or Gallery, Prinzessinnengärten and Kleiner Salon.